DeeLoaf

I predict that merchants will start to always round to the nearest 5 cents in the customers favor when paying with cash. Why? Because if you want to short me 2 pennies I'm going to pay with debit or a credit card, things that you as a merchant pay for. Unless of course you start trying to pass those merchant fees on to customers ... maybe in the USA but not sure about Canada lol. Also, Canada removing the penny is stupid. They should just make them out of plastic or something else super-cheap. Its not like anyone uses pennies in a vending machine anyway. Also .. Bitcoins rock.

I've read in many places that historically the silver to gold ratio has been about 15 to 1 since at least the time of the Roman Empire. But new information comes my way from time to time, and according to ranting Andy the current rates are closer to 10 to 1 (discussion). Couple that with the fact that Silver is highly in demand for industrial and manufacturing related purposes and you can see there is a lot of pressure on silver compared to gold. I would expect then that when the paper markets finally collapse and we see true price discovery we'll see that 10 to 1 ratio show up in the pricing. Whether that means $2000 gold and $200 silver, or some other numbers due to the unknowable future actions of the central banks and the effects they have on overall money supply and thus the prices quoted for precious metals, I dont think it matters - Gold and Silver are your ticket to surviving a HARD powerdown/economic collapse situation. The 10 to 1 ratio as currently produced according to analysts like Andy Hoffman is new information to me, and helps me put things further into perspective. I'm also still long on Bitcoins and expect them to more than double in value over the next 12 months with heavy upward pressure towards the end of 2012 due to the upcoming halving of the block reward.

Time to get your GIABO on. Bitcoins are still around $3. And the MFing Global shit is still making headlines. This one is a month old but I just laughed a lot at Davincij15's take. Don't forget, all major central banks are in collusion and Canada's banks are just as leveraged as anyone else. There is not enough collateral to satisfy the liabilities that are going bad and all the banks can do right now is pump money to wipe this shit off balance sheets. Or something like that. On a lighter note, Adam has once again challenged the man to put up or shut up, reminding us that the NDAA bill doesnt actually remove your rights -- because you dont have any to remove! And lastly, we remind ourselves that Canada no longer exists, if in fact it ever even did.

So what do I recommend? Lay low! Don't make yourself a target. Keep stacking physical assets that you can hold; Gold and Silver as well as barter items like toilet paper, whisky, and ammunition. I also still have a strong belief in the integrity of the Bitcoin system and I feel those tokens will be able to continue to represent un-hypothecatable value in digital form, so long as the core protocols and networks continue to prove their resilience. The beauty of Bitcoin in these coming troubled times is that digital private keys can be carried far more discreetly than physical silver or gold.

If you are planning to get out of town when things start getting "weird", do it sooner rather than later. At some point roads will become impassible and you'll be able to count on being robbed/shot by roving gangs, armed security personnel, or both. Remember, we are not protected against American agression here in "Canada" as we're all part of this G20 thing now and G20 security forces can roam freely and unchallenged anywhere in the G20 countries.

Please do not jam police radios with simple circuits printed off local 3d printers. Do not point laser pointers from multiple sources at the same officers face. Do not take their weapons off them. Do not cut through their security fences with bolt cutters. Do not wear body armor when you go protesting. Do not equip yourself with gas masks. Do not in any way attempt to be more fucking organized than THEM or in any way attempt to have your shit together more than they do. Because if you do any of that shit, you just might kick their asses.

IO::Socket::SSL vs Net::SSL the fatal showdown. Ripped into the internals of LWP::UserAgent to find out how it sets up proxying for https connections. All the info on the net says that you cannot do $ua->proxy('https','1.2.3.4:8080); because it just wont fucking work for https. Also you can go ahead and set up shit like $ENV{HTTPS_PROXY} but scratch you head as to why its not actually being used by the code. So then you call env_proxy and wonder why the fuck its all of a sudden again not working for https. ... anyway, at least on my system, turns out Net::HTTPS is doing some decision making about what socket module to use ... and if you want it to actually correctly make use of your HTTPS_PROXY environment variable, you need to find a way to tell it to use Net::SSL. ... I'm not quite sure on that part yet, but I wanted to share that which took me 7 (SEVEN) dang hours to figure out. I sometimes think I am in the wrong line of work when it takes me so long to figure something out like this. And this problem exists since like 2001 for some people too judging by the unresolved posts I found scattered throughout the web.

Anyway next I think I need to do some testing and more reading of code but finally seeing the proxy IP in my ssl log and ... AND --> __AND__ seeing the proper html from the response, makes me really manically (maniacally even) happy. ... hoping to update this with elegant workaround/solution/fix that doesnt involve making hacked versions of the LWP and related modules.

Ok, protip: put this in your BEGIN block:

$ENV{PERL_NET_HTTPS_SSL_SOCKET_CLASS}='Net::SSL';

and you just might achieve https proxying (via ENV settings) win. I seem to be. What this does is tells Net::HTTPS to use Net::SSL as the socket object. And Net::SSL (I havent looked inside) _seems_ to do stuff right so far (using ENV settings).

As the world financial system self-destructs like a train wreck in slow motion I find myself paralyzed to actually focus on my work tasks that I have to do in order to earn my money and pay my bills. This global show is so multi-faceted and interesting that there seems to be constantly updates on various intertwined situations and goings on in the world that I am finding myself so distracted I cannot bring myself away from paying attention to these things. I feel like keeping tabs on and in tune with what is going on in the human collective consciousness to be more important right now than money-earning activities. I'm sure my landlord would think otherwise however. So that is my struggle, so much culture to experience and so little time in which to experience it ... and needing to slot in money earning time as well.

The Frustration!

LOL! ... Hoping more people will stop paying their rents and create a backlog in the eviction squad so that I can soon safely begin to disregard such trivialities as work-for-money.

Bitcoin makes the concept of the nation state an anachronism. Living anachronisms exist on borrowed time and eventually fade away into obscurity. We do not need central banks or their little bitch countries for anything any more. Welcome to the exciting future of unlimited human potential.

That's my gut feeling about all of this. That this is on the line of the important shifts that have to happen in society for our species to move forward and progress to our destiny among the stars. Spread ideas worth spreading and live the joy, live the love and bear witness to the discoveries of your own consciousness.